


Talking Points

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Jedi Training, Revelations, Skywalker Family Feels, West Wing Title Project, the skywalker family tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 05:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12698610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: Rey knows there's a connection between them--something more than the Force, more than destiny.





	Talking Points

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [**West Wing title project**](http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/386778.html). Gotta finish some of these wips before The Last Jedi comes out and josses everything.

Rey waits a long time for Luke to say something. She's starting to feel self-conscious about everything--coming here, holding out his lightsaber, _existing_ \--when he says, "The Force really does work in mysterious ways." He gives her a small smile. "You can put that away for now. You'll need it more than I do when the time comes."

"That's reassuring," she says, taken aback.

He laughs, and it makes him looking younger and kinder and somehow sadder all at the same time. "And you haven't even heard the rest of it yet."

"Oh." Of course there's a _rest of it._ Even she knows there's a difference between truth and legend.

He nods. "What are you called?"

It's not until later that she'll realize why he phrased it that way. Now, she responds, "Rey."

"Rey." He repeats it slowly and smiles. "That's a good name." 

She shrugs. "It's mine, anyway."

"Yes."

He steps toward her and she can see a cairn of rocks behind him, scattered with tiny white flowers. She shivers, just a little, but he notices.

"Come inside. We'll have tea."

"Okay." She tucks the lightsaber back into her bag and follows him through the mossy entrance to the cavern, which it turns out, leads to what used to be a temple, its grandeur faded by time and erosion.

*

(The first time she and Luke meditate together, Rey sees the wide expanse of stars over the Goazon Badlands, the subtle drift of sand in the wind that changes all the landmarks overnight, feels the welcome coolness of late evening after a day spent broiling in the sun. She can smell the hot metal and ozone of a downed star destroyer and taste the cool sweetness of water from the vaporators after a long day's work. They've both been scoured and shaped by the desert, and it binds them as surely as the Force or any family ties. Even millions of lightyears away, surrounded by the ocean, the desert holds its claim.) 

*

The tea Luke brews is mildly spicy but the aftertaste is sweet. Though she's never had it before--tea was not a luxury provided by Unkar Plutt and she'd never spent any of her meager credits on it when it was available in the market--she quickly grows fond of it, and the stories Luke tells her each morning while it steeps, stories of the Rebellion and the General, of Han and Chewie, of his own abbreviated training and the things he's learned since.

"But you didn't come here for that," he says, leaning back in his chair and stroking his beard thoughtfully.

"No," she says, and then, "maybe," and then, "yes." She sets her cup on the table. "I know the myth of Luke Skywalker, but not the person behind it."

He laughs. "There's not much to know." She gives him a skeptical look. "I did all those things you've heard about, yes. Well, most of them." Another laugh. "But I wasn't--I didn't have some grand master plan. Most of the time, we were just doing things on the fly and hoping they'd work out."

"I have some experience with that," she says with a laugh of her own.

"Well, the Force is strong with you, Rey. It's both a blessing and curse. All I can show you is how to listen for its promptings. What you do with that knowledge is up to you. You'll have to trust your instincts, even when no one else will."

"I know," she says. "I do." It's not all false bravado. She knows she can trust herself to do things because she's already done them--flying the Millennium Falcon, fighting Kylo Ren, finding Luke Skywalker. Nothing she ever expected to do in her life, but when the time came, when they had to be done, she did them. Dig in during a sandstorm. Use the Force to defeat Kylo Ren and save Finn. Survive.

It's the same thing now.

Luke must sense some of what she's thinking because his face turns solemn. "It's not always so easy."

"None of it was _easy_." She can't help sounding a little defensive.

"Compared to what's coming, it will seem like it was."

"I'm not afraid." She squares her shoulders and raises her chin; it's only a little bit of a lie.

An expression she can't identify flashes across his face before he goes solemn again. "You will be."

*

(Fear is an old friend. Fear kept her alive more than once on Jakku, and anger gave her courage when she needed it to fight Kylo Ren. Hate is less familiar, though she knows the bitter sting of betrayal, and the sour taste of adrenaline and broken trust in the back of her throat. It's not something she ever wants to feel again even before Luke warns her against it.

She acts brave when she has to, and she knows acting brave is the same as being brave, because what matters in the end is what she _does_ , and she has no intention of letting fear rule her actions.

Of course, she also knows that intentions don't mean much if she can't follow through. That seems to be the moral of every story Luke tells her.)

*

Rey is no stranger to hard work, though Ahch-To is the opposite of Jakku in almost every way imaginable, and she has to learn to navigate rocky steps made slippery from the sea spray, and the gravelly shoreline at low tide, bits of shell cutting into the soles of her feet until she learns to let the Force guide her steps. On Jakku, she'd learned to navigate wrecks and raiders by listening to the other scavengers and then testing out their lessons on her own. On Ahch-To, her learning is more intuitive--Luke doesn't always have the words to explain what he wants her to do, but once she opens herself to the Force, she just _knows_. It's easy to let it guide her, to delve into that bright space in her mind that is deeper than thought and steadier than reflex.

"Your focus determines your reality," Luke tells her early on, and once she understands that, it's easy to lock in and let the Force take her where it wills.

Luke still wears that concerned look, though, when she presses him for more complicated drills, more difficult tasks. 

"It seems easy enough now," he says, as she balances on one hand while the incoming surf tries to topple her, "when it's just me and you and maybe a seagull or two trying to steal your lunch. But under fire, against stormtroopers or another Force user--" he doesn't say Kylo Ren; he never says Kylo Ren "--it's much more difficult."

"I know," she says, lowering herself gently out of her handstand. "I understand." She remembers how hard it was to fight Ren on Starkiller Base. How odd and unbalanced the lightsaber had felt in her hand and how difficult it was to defend herself at first. But she also remembers opening herself up to the Force and letting it move through her, how strong and sure it made her when she beat him back. 

"You were lucky," Luke says sternly when she tells him this.

"The Force was with me," she counters. "Any luck I had, I made."

"Don't get overconfident, Rey. The Force is with you, yes, but it is not only with you." He scrubs a hand over his face. "He was wounded and you were lucky." 

"Fine," she says with a sniff, rubbing the wet sand off her hands and taking up her lightsaber. "Teach me how to be good, so I don't have to be lucky."

*

(Rey learns to use the lightsaber and she comes to love the way it feels in her hand, a natural extension of her arm, a glowing embodiment of her will and her trust in the Force. It sings softly to her in a way that's disturbing--before it was Luke's it was his father's, after all, so what does that say about her?--and comforting--I know you, it says, and together we will do great things\--in equal measure. 

Luke tells her the images it sometimes shows her are memories of the past, not visions of the future.

"I didn't even know it was possible to have visions of the future!" she says, and his mouth quirks in a wry grin beneath his beard. 

"The future is always in motion," he tells her, "and often trying to prevent what you've seen is what causes it to happen."

"And the past?" Some of what she's seen in those brief glimpses is exhilarating, but some of it is horrible and terrifying. 

"We should learn from it, but we shouldn't dwell on it." He sighs. "A lesson I'm still learning, I suppose." He reignites his lightsaber, the green of it bright against the cloudy day. "Let's concentrate on the here and now."

"Okay," Rey says, putting aside the images of the past to focus on the present.)

*

Rey knows there's a connection between them--something more than the Force, more than destiny. She's not even sure she believes in destiny; it seems so grand and presumptuous for a scavenger from Jakku, but it's still hard sometimes for her to believe this is her life now. 

"Maybe the Force _is_ destiny," she says one morning over tea and toast, "and that's what led me here."

"The Force guides us in all things if we let it, Rey, and through those choices we make our own destiny. Or so I'd like to believe." Luke shakes his head and lets out soft huff. "You're my daughter," he says, as matter-of-factly as he might say, Water is wet. "And the Force has brought you back to me."

"I--am?" she squeaks. It would certainly explain a lot, but it also raises more questions than it answers. "But then why don't I remember you? Why did you leave me on Jakku?"

He looks away, old pain visible in the deep lines on his face and unshed tears bright in his eyes. "I didn't. I thought you were dead."

She thinks of the small cairn on the cliff where she'd first met him, and the careful hope in his eyes when he'd turned to greet her.

"Oh." 

He looks back at her and meets her gaze squarely. "I'm so sorry for all the years we've lost, all the things I've missed."

She takes a deep breath and resolves to withhold judgement until she hears the whole story. She'd had to let go of any lingering resentment over being abandoned years ago, in order to survive. She finds it easier now to accept the truth and to let Luke's--her _father's_ \-- clear regret and sorrow overcome the pain. 

She reaches out and takes his hands, first the metal, then the flesh. "You can stop dwelling on the past." She gives him a small smile. "I'm here now."

"You are," he says, his voice choked with emotion. "You're alive and you're here."

*

("Graves are for the living," he tells her later, after they've both cried and cleared the air. "The ones left behind." And then he bobs his head back and forth. "Not in your case, but you know what I mean."

"I do," she says, staring at the small mound of stones that he'd built to mark the death of his daughter, who it turns out, is not dead at all. Not yet, anyway. Not for a long time, hopefully.

"But history has a way of repeating," he continues. "Or, at least, coming back to haunt us at the most unexpected moments."

"You didn't fall to the dark side or cut off my hand," she replies, and he winces. "I think we've already improved the story this time around.")

*

Months later, Rey returns to the Resistance with her father at her side and the Force as her ally, secure in herself and her place in the galaxy, and ready to face whatever comes.

end


End file.
